


The Knight Who Trespasses

by masterofmidgets



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:43:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterofmidgets/pseuds/masterofmidgets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.” T.H. White - The Once and Future King</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Knight Who Trespasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StripySock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/gifts).



  
  


 

_"Sir, your honour beginnes to fall,_

_That wont was wide in world to sprede,_

_Of Launcelot and other all,_

_That ever so doughty were in deed."_

_"Dame, there to thy counsel I call:_

_What were best for such a need?"_

_"Yif ye your honour holde shall,_

_A tournament were best to bede.”_

  
  
  
On the morning of the tournament, Lancelot awoke in the bedchamber of Queen Guinevere, and he was loathe to leave it. He had  been in Camelot since St. Stephen’s Day, and with so many about, and so much feasting and celebrating, the two of them could not steal away a moment. He had not even dared to kiss her since he returned, and he had seen the hurt in her eyes when he passed her by in the hall.  
  
But that night he had lain with her, and he was in her bed now, with his head on her pale breast, and her red hair in waves all about him. Even half-asleep he could recognize the garden scent of the rose water she bathed it in. As he could recognize her hands, tracing delicate lines on his bare chest as she watched him drowse.  
  
Lancelot groaned. “My god, woman,” he murmured. “Do you aim to inflame me again before I take up my sword?”  
  
“Do I distract you overmuch, my knight? Do you think of me when you have your sword in hand?”  
  
Her hands left him and he followed them, rolling to his knees and pinning her to the bed.  
  
“Witch-woman,” he said. He kissed her breast. “Sorceress.” His kisses wandered up her neck, and he could feel the bird-flutter of her pulse.  
  
“And you will never break this enchantment,” she said.  
  
She drew him closer, her body eager to yield to him, and he wanted nothing more. But regretfully, he pulled away. It was nearly dawn, and if he tarried too long he chanced exposure for the both of them. Worse luck if he were late to the field, and his fellow knights thought to chase him down.  
  
Lancelot donned his armor while Guinevere dressed herself in white samite and furs, and pinned her hair up under her veil. When he reached for his sword and his yellow-painted shield she produced instead a handkerchief.  
  
“A token, my knight, for you to wear on the field,” she said, and tied it round his sleeve.  
  
“Shall I ride for your honor today, then?” he asked. As he had done so many times before.  
  
“Let them all guess what lady gave it to you, and never guess it right.”  
  
Lancelot tweaked a corner of the cloth with his mail-clad thumb. On a field of white silk a red dragon reared up and roared. He looked at her, and Guinevere gave him an arch smile.  
  
Outside the shuttered window the first trumpet sounded. Guinevere followed him to the door, and when he made to leave she drew him back and kissed him on the mouth.  
  
“Fight well, my love,” she said softly. “We will be most displeased if you do not take the field.”  
  
She had known him for too many years, perhaps, to tell him to take care, and expect him to heed it, but she would say this much. And he heard it, and bowed his head in supplication, and she kissed him once more. Only then she let him go.  
  
Just outside her chamber he chanced upon Sir Tristan, armed and armored and so close by the door he must have heard every word that passed between the knight and his queen. His expression was inscrutable. For a breath of time Lancelot thought of drawing his sword on him, and he kept his palm on the hilt as he spoke.  
  
“And how is Lady Iseult?” he said evenly.  
  
Tristan snorted at him. “Passing fair, when last I saw her,” he said. “At Joyous Gard in the summer, and well away from the war with my uncle. I’ve not forgot your generosity in that.”  
  
Lancelot had ridden in that battle in the summer against the king of Cornwall, while Tristan was in the north, and had slain a score of knights. And Ector had told him there was talk that Mark was rallying again, that the next clash would come before Candlemas. Tristan’s war, for the sake of that Irish maiden, and what man could blame him for it? Not Lancelot, who knew he’d won his silence for a time.  
  
Side by side, they walked out of the castle, and did not speak of love.  
  
  
When King Arthur had called for a tournament to be held on the Feast of the Epiphany for all the knights gathered for Christmas, there had been much talk of spectacle. For that court had never been content with ordinary revelry, jaded by Merlin’s boy king and his miraculous sword, by empty seats no man could take, by forest spirits who rode headless out of the hall.    
  
There would be nothing so grand this year as Gawain’s green axeman. But a senator from Rome, newly arrived and eager to please, had obliged with two gifts from the boundless ancient coffers of the Emperor to stand as the tournament prize. No knight had seen them, or heard of their shape, only that old and heathen magic had gone into their crafting, and lent them certain peculiar properties to be revealed when they were gifted to the winner at the feast.  
  
Lancelot cared nothing for such trifles, or any powers as they might possess. He would win them all the same; he could do no less under Guinevere’s gaze, with her favor --  her red-dragon banner -- on his sleeve.  
  
He took his place among the knights under the near pavilion, and Tristan on the opposite, just as the last gathering trumpet sounded. In all of Camelot and farther lands, Lancelot knew, there was no fairer sight than this - the sky brittle like hammered steel, the piercing winter sun caught in glints on helm and spear point, the knights in their polished mail and bright tunics, their flags, their sleeves and tokens from their ladies. No fairer sight but one, and she stood in the stands at the side of her husband.  
  
The assembled company paraded past the stands, and when Lancelot rode by her he raised his spear in the jouster’s semblance of a bow. She smiled down at him from the royal box, as she had not smiled at any other knight.  
  
There were whispers around him as he took his place back in line. For years Camelot had been a palace of whispered words, a slanderous city, the cacophony of hushed voices falling to silence as he passed. And Guinevere did little to stem it, with her secret smiles, her secret meetings, her openly given gifts.  
  
Lancelot had never quite understood the ruinous compulsion that drove her to try to destroy the fragile occultation of their love. Whether she wanted Lancelot - damningly - to lay claim to her, a final and fatal proof of his affections, or if she had some darker motive, unknown to him. Perhaps unrelated to him. She had little enough love for this court that had never loved or wanted her, from the day Arthur had brought her home as a queen. What satisfaction did it give her, to defy their hollow honor, knowing she was above them, and untouchable?  
  
Or perhaps like him she was simply overwhelmed, too deeply drawn by the heart to bear concealment. He could not say. And he could not stop her. So he let the men speak as they would. As she had said, they could have their guesses.  
  
At least their tongues were stilled as they took up spear and shield and readied themselves to ride. Lancelot scarcely heard the herald’s fanfare as he threw himself forward into the charge.  
  
At the first clash he unseated five men with his spear. He gave Sir Lionel such a clout that blood streamed freely from his nose and mouth onto his saddle, and Sir Tor was thrown to the ground and knocked quite senseless. By the time his spear shattered against Ywain’s breastplate he had met a full dozen knights and been victorious, and most of those remaining on the field were on foot, and fighting with swords.  
  
Mounted, he never thought of anything but the heft of his weapon, the enemy before him, and his allies behind. Now on the ground, he noticed the crisp smell of trampled grass, cut through with iron-bitter blood. His ears rang from the last blow to his helm, but from a great distance he heard shouting around him. Lancelot drew his sword from its scabbard.  
  
  
By dusk, his armor was scored and dented in places, his shoulder throbbing. Dinadan had nearly held him to a draw, and left several darkening bruises, before Lancelot had got under his grip and flung his sword into the mud. But for all his aching Lancelot still stood. It was plain to all on the field that he had won the day. There was cheering in the stands as he walked back to the castle.  
  
He bathed, dressed in his finest, tucked Guinevere’s gift into his belt. He slipped into the Great Hall unannounced, the feast already begun, and took his seat at the round table. At the other side, Guinevere poured honeyed hot mead for his cousins; from the seat next to his, Arthur watched her, and the glances of pale wrist and throat she revealed. On Lancelot’s arrival, though, he remembered himself, and greeted him, clasping his arm and kissing him fondly.  
  
He called for squires to serve them. The cooks of Camelot had outdone themselves, and the tables were laden with delicacies - roast swans on silver platters, wild boar, rabbits boiled in milk and spices, pheasants flamed in wine, exotic fruits in sugared sauce, pastries glazed with eggs. At the center of the table, a marzipan saint fought a green sugar dragon breathing holly flames.  
  
“Wine for our most noble knight,” Arthur roared, sloshing his own goblet, and a squire filled Lancelot’s with claret. “May he never fight on any side but ours!”  
  
A rumble of agreement from the rest of the table, many of them still nursing the wounds Lancelot had given them.  
  
“You honor me, my lord,” he murmured. So it was to be one of those feasts. And one of those moods. Arthur clapped a hand on his shoulder, broad thumb brushing the bare skin of his throat, and drew him closer, eyes intent, if slightly unfocused.  
  
“This table is honored,” Arthur said, almost somber. “To have your loyalty. As I have been.”  
  
Lancelot shivered at this bluntness, at the undercurrent of honesty no one else in the room had heard, and that broke the spell. Arthur laughed, rough and bearish, breath sticky with ale-fume, and nearly knocked him out of his seat.  
  
He said, “Just so, and you’ll earn your keep again this season when you drive King Mark out of my lands.”  
  
“If he cannot find better men to fight me, I’ll not have to drive him hard,” Lancelot answered.  
  
“He’d rather waste a dozen men trying to tie Sir Tristan to a tree, than send them where they’re best needed,” Arthur said. “His soldiers gather now at Liddington, my southern lords have told me. As if he could defend it for an hour.”  
  
The dinner talk turned to strategy then, of fortifications and reinforcements, of sea-battles, the landscape of western Cornwall. Arthur, having committed himself to this impassioned bitter war, was determined to end it shortly; it had caught up his round table for too long already, and cost them too dearly.  
  
Lancelot rested easy as he argued armaments, the knotted soreness bleeding out of his back. Arthur’s arm remained slung companionably across his shoulders, and from time to time the king stroked the back of his neck, idly, unconsciously, as they talked. But as the evening went on and the candles guttered lower in the sconces, Lancelot came to realize he was being stared at.  
  
Several seats down the table, Sir Bedivere sipped at his wine glass, his plate empty and untouched. He had not spoken that meal, except to offer a mocking aside to his seat-mate, and he scarcely listened to the conversation of the other knights. Instead his eyes were fixed on Lancelot so persistently it made his skin prickle. His countenance was unreadable, a tight-lipped glare that could have been the keenest of longing or the most vicious of envy.  
  
It has ever been thus, since he came to Camelot, late to the table, late to the Pentecostal oath. Late to a company whose love and loyalty had been bound to Arthur those first tempestuous years of his inheritance. They swore in blood, those knights, on their knees in the battlefield mud, and followed Arthur into his hopeless war, and saw him win it. And into their rebuilt Albion, into Arthur’s fledgling peace, had ridden Lancelot, who had no part of it.  
  
Distrust gave way to uneasy talk. Who was this man, to give his oath to the king so easily - and what had he done, for Arthur to take it, and lend him trust and affection so easily in return? Most had laid it on the influence of the queen, favoritism given to a knight who had sworn himself first to her honor, who rumor and maliciousness already placed in her bed. But some said it was more, that Arthur himself had some special interest in keeping Lancelot close by him, and none said it louder or more often than Sir Bedivere.  
  
He had been the longest at Arthur’s side, as close to him as his own kin, in his youthful way had adored him, and he had been supplanted. The years since had made his tongue more cautious, less inclined to gossip about that which, Lancelot suspected, revealed as much about his own unspoken yearning as any real indiscretion. But he had not forgotten, and on nights like this, when wine and ale made them all incautious, he could never keep it from his face.  
  
It was wearying, the weight of Bedivere’s jealousy, and of his constant suspicion, but there was little Lancelot could do about it. Jousting or dueling would only force his bitterness deeper. It was not a thing he could explain to Arthur, who would only mourn that they couldn’t see he loved all his table dearly. The most he could do was put it out of his mind, and put himself out of Bedivere’s view.  
  
“My lord,” he said softly, touching Arthur’s arm. “The evening is long, and your wife has heard enough of war. We should retire.”  
  
“And does winning mean so little to you now, that you would leave without your prize?” Arthur said, half-laughing. “Well, I’ll not let you rob me of my show, sir knight.”  
  
He knocked his wineglass on the table, stood, and dragged Lancelot to his feet as well. Under the sudden attention of the table, he spread his hands.  
  
“Alas,” Arthur announced. “Our holiday feast must come to an end. And to crown the night, I will crown here Sir Lancelot the victor of today’s tournament, and present him with his prize - treasures gifted to me by the holy emperor of Rome.”  
  
In the center of the table there were two silk-wrapped bundles. Arthur took the first and unwrapped it, revealing a bronze dagger the length of a man’s forearm in a sheath of tooled red leather. When he unsheathed it and held it up, all at the table could see the runes etched in the blade.  
  
“Wear this, and our ambassador tells me that you will ever be safe from betrayal,” Arthur said. “The magic of the Roman priests of old makes it burn hot, in the presence of those you cannot trust.”  
  
He buckled it onto Lancelot’s sword belt, and Lancelot supposed it was only the borrowed heat of Arthur’s skin that made it seem warm.  
  
Arthur turned to the second and smaller bundle. Its treasure proved to be a blown-glass ball the size of a nightingale’s egg, set into a cap of knotted gold and suspended from a narrow chain.  
  
Arthur said, “A trifle, this - the Roman ladies wear them like jewels, and see their fortunes in them.” When he lifted it to place it around Lancelot’s neck, it caught the flickering fire light and held it, casting no reflection.  
  
“Wear them deservedly, and well,” Arthur said. The silence yielded to applause, and drunken cheering, most of the knights past deep into their cups.  
  
Arthur strode around the table to where Guinevere sat, watching the scene with amusement. He bowed extravagantly and offered her his hand, which she took.  
  
“Shall we go to rest, my queen?” he asked. Lancelot, from the other end of the table, could not hear her assent, but she rose, and Arthur guided her out of the hall. The knights began to disperse, some of them heading toward their own bedchambers, some of them toward others’, and some in hunt of more ale to finish the night.  
  
Lancelot slipped quietly out of the crowd, and followed after Arthur and Guinevere.  
  
He nearly stumbled over Gawain, standing watch outside Arthur’s door. Slouched against the wall, lazily polishing his sword, only a slight unsteadiness in his hands betraying his part in the evening’s merriment. Lancelot’s excuse was already on his tongue - lost, drunk, on the way to his own chambers - but Gawain just nodded at him, and kept cleaning his sword.  
  
“Thought so,” he said. His moustache twitched. “There’s no one been past in a while, if you’re worried about being seen.”  
  
Lancelot was taken aback into silence. They had long been friends, he and Gawain - he and all the whelp of Orkney - but it was a friendship of arms, not of confidence. He would trust his back to Gawain in battle without a second thought, but he had never told Gawain of this. He had not wanted to burden the noble and uncomplicated knight with the treachery of his heart - had not wanted to risk the action chivalry would demand of him if he knew.  
  
Yet now he was exposed and Gawain - shrugged, and hooked his sword once more into his green-trimmed girdle. His tunic was wild-wood green to match, a color he wore often in recent years, more often at Christmas, when he came back from the north. Perhaps he should have guessed to find more understanding there.  
  
“Well-met, brother,” Lancelot said quietly, and walked past him into Arthur’s chambers.  
  
  
Guinevere sat on Arthur’s bed, her kirtle unlaced, and Arthur sat behind her, taking down her long hair. He kissed her while his hands worked, affectionate feathery brushes of his lips to all her bared skin, his eagerness suggesting that he had thought of this all evening. Lancelot crossed the space of the room in a stride to drop and kneel at her feet.  
  
“At your service,” he whispered, and it felt like the most honest thing he had ever said.  
  
Guinevere tipped his chin up so he was looking into her fair eyes. “And how well you serve, my dearest,” she said, and with her white hand on his face it was almost a benediction, until she shifted and Arthur dragged him up and into the bed between him.  
  
He lay languid and pliant as Arthur held him, as Guinevere undressed him, content to yield like a conquered kingdom to her ministrations. She stripped him of his tunic and undid his leggings, but when she came to his sword-belt she paused and glanced at Arthur, who shook his head.  
  
“Leave it,” he said gruffly. “And the chain. He should show off his gifts, don’t you think?”  
  
One hand snaked around to stroke his chest. The other plucked the long-forgotten handkerchief from his belt and twisted it once more around his naked arm. He was all naked now, except for those three tokens, given of Arthur, given of Guinevere, the two of them meeting over his skin to kiss each other, and then to kiss him. Guinevere breathed warm on his thighs, Arthur licked his collarbone. He was claimed, possessed, he was bound to them in blood and love and duty as sure as any oath he’d ever sworn to them. Bound to this, god help him.  
  
His crystal ball, resting over his heart, was cast the tawny color of Arthur’s beard. The dagger was pressed between his flesh and Guinevere’s. He had no need of foreign magic, not these magics. There was only one facet of his future he was concerned with, only two people whose betrayal could touch him; all that mattered to him was contained within this room. And if it would end, if it would break, he did not want to know it.  
  
Guinevere wrapped herself around him, and drew him into her; Arthur held her hands pressed to the bed, and groaned with need into Lancelot’s shoulder blades as he entered him from behind. Lancelot, in the center, could feel them in every inch of his body as he let himself be taken.  
  
Lancelot knew that this thing they had was as fragile as blown glass. It could not bear scrutiny, or discovery; it existed only in this moment, in this room, in the tiny space of silence they had made for it, and the silence and the secret could not last. But in this space the three of them - husband and wife and lover, king and queen and knight - were as one, and Lancelot with all his heart would preserve it as long and as well as he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Some source notes: The better part of the canon and timeline are drawn from Malory's Morte D'Arthur (including the entirely anachronistic Romans!) and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, along with a few details from Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Mort Arthure, some half-remembered Marie de France, and a bit of general sensibility from The Once and Future King. But in the best Arthurian tradition, I did feel free to play fast and loose with all of it where it suited my needs.


End file.
